SciStarter, a longtime collaborator of the Wilson Center, has always been a platform for the citizen science community to find projects to contribute to. But for many projects and would-be participants, there are significant challenges to finding and accessing the right tools for collecting and sharing scientific information.

To meet this need, SciStarter is expanding their platform to collect information on a range of tools that projects and volunteers can build, borrow, or buy. The Wilson Center, a proud partner in this initiative, recently co-hosted a Workshop at the Arizona State University Citizen Science and Maker Summit to help design an initial taxonomy for the SciStarter Tools Database. Our next step towards finalizing this taxonomy is testing the initial list of fields by collecting information on a range of tools used by citizen science project coordinators and volunteers.

If there is a citizen science tool that you sponsor, fund, design, build, calibrate, distribute, or otherwise consider yourself an expert on, we need your help. Please add your tool to the beta version of the SciStarter Tools database by filling out this form (note: you will need a SciStarter user account to submit your information). The information you share will help us better understand how people articulate important information about citizen science tools before the database structure is finalized and populated with hundreds of tools from around the world.

Photo: A kit containing the tools required to participate in a citizen science project measuring soil moisture. For more information on citizen science tool kits, check out this video.

While the taxonomy included in the beta version of the SciStarter Tools database builds upon the contributions of our workshop participants, the workshop was a single step in a longer process of user-centered design.

In early 2016, SciStarter and Arizona State University interviewed 110 people about their citizen science tool needs. The core project team, which included SciStarter founder Darlene Cavalier, ASU Assistant Professor of Engineering Dr. Micah Lande, and students Brianne Fisher, David Sittenfeld, and Erica Prange, used lean launch methods to identify key “pain points” for the “customer segment” of citizen science volunteers and project organizers. Insights gleaned from this approach are documented here.

Led by Erica Prange, the SciStarter team then surveyed 50 project owners about their tools. These responses were instrumental in building the initial database taxonomy.

SciStarter, the Wilson Center, and Arizona State University held a workshop to test the use of key database fields through personas and use case to validate key hypotheses and identify new information to include.

Based on this research, a beta version of the SciStarter Tools database will be tested by project coordinators and volunteers who enter information their tools here.

Entries to the beta database will be tested and reviewed by an expert advisory panel. This step will help ensure, for example, manufacturer specifications for longevity, data quality, and other factors are accurate in a range of use conditions.

Thanks to a growing number of databases including SciStarter, the Federal Catalog, and CitSci.org, information about citizen science projects is now very easy to find. Information about tools- including the hardware cataloged by SciStarter, and also the software required to support data management and other key phases of the scientific research process- remains elusive. The SciStarter Tools database is one crucial step towards a research ecosystem where the public can access both opportunities for contributing to science, and the tools required to get research done.

Citizen science and crowdsourcing has gained significant momentum in the U.S. Federal government in the past four years. In September 2015 the White House issued a memorandum asking federal agencies to report on their citizen science and crowdsourcing projects and appoint coordinators within each agency. In 2016 we witnessed the launch of http://www.citizenscience.gov, a platform with an extensive toolkit on how to conduct these projects as well as a catalog and community hub. In addition to these Executive Branch initiatives, a grassroots Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (CCS) has emerged with 300 members across 59 agencies. The Science and Technology Program (STIP) at the Wilson Center has played a role in encouraging this momentum, providing support through building a cartographic catalog of federally supported citizen science and crowdsourcing projects and through extensive research into some of the legal, administrative and intellectual property concerns for conducting projects within the Federal government.

However, a new Administration often brings new priorities, and it’s vital to preserve this momentum and history for new leadership. STIP conducted interviews with twelve representatives of the Federal Community of practice and Agency Coordinators and conducted desk research to compile 10 strategic recommendations for advancing federal policies and programs in citizen science and crowdsourcing to facilitate the transfer of knowledge on this incredible momentum.

Please join us for a discussion of these recommendations, a celebration of the history of the movement and a dialogue on the future of citizen science and crowdsourcing in the Federal government.

AI—along with related initiatives on topics ranging from precision medicine to the Internet of Things (IoT)—was also showcased at the White House Frontiers Conference. But the winds of change blow fiercely in election years. With the presidential election approaching, one key task for the incoming administration will be to take account of current OSTP policies and determine whether these will be bolstered or recast. The rest of this piece considers: How can the next administration advance current policies? And what can be done in and beyond the White House to ensure that AI R&D remains a national priority in the coming years?

There are many technologies that can be grouped under the designation of AI, from general techniques to specific applications. One general technology is deep learning, which is a set of techniques for gradually structuring data by defining it in layers. A more specific application is machine translation, which powers the familiar service Google Translate. While many AI technologies were initially created in research laboratories, innovation in AI technology is increasingly driven by industry, thanks to (for example) market incentives for investing in digital personal assistants and autonomous driving.

Any administration that makes AI a priority will want to see the US emerge as a global leader. Unfortunately, as a relatively new area of broad public interest the exact levels of financial investment in AI research are not well-defined. Thus, determining where funding originates or how exactly it is spent is challenging. As one starting point, the National AI R&D strategy gives a number of $1.1 billion in unclassified, federally funded R&D for AI. [1] However, without more statistics for AI investment, it is difficult to compare US federal investments with funding in other countries. Some other approximations of productivity are possible, including comparing the number of relevant journal articles and patents in countries like China and the US (e.g., NSTC’s strategy in the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan), or comparing the number of computer science publications by country.[2]Continue reading “AI- Policies for the Next Administration”→

Initial award: Up to $40,000 each to two communities to deploy air sensors, share data with the public, and develop data management best practices from sensors

Additional funding: Up to $10,000 each to the winning communities in 2017 based on their accomplishments and collaboration.

I came to the EPA with a firm belief that data can make a difference in environmental protection. Since I’ve been here I’ve found that communities are leading the way by using data to understand local conditions and operate efficiently. That’s why I’m excited to announce EPA’s Smart City Air Challenge.

This new challenge encourages communities to install hundreds of air quality sensors and manage the resulting data. EPA is offering two communities up to $40,000 each to work with their residents to crowdsource air quality data and share it with the public online. The projects will give individuals a role in collecting the data and understanding how environmental conditions affect their health and their community.

Air quality sensors are becoming less expensive and people are beginning to use them to measure pollution levels in their neighborhoods and homes. They’re developing rapidly, but most sensors aren’t ready for regulatory use. However, by networking these devices, communities can better understand what is happening at the local level. Communities will figure out where to place the sensors and how to maintain the devices. It’s up to each community to decide what pollutants they want to measure.

The prize funds serve as seed money, so communities will need to partner with other parties, such as sensor manufacturers, data management companies and universities. These partners can provide resources and expertise in topics where communities lack experience. In doing so, communities will learn how to use data analytics, which can be applied to other aspects of community life.

What does EPA get out of this? We’ll learn how communities collect, store and manage large amounts of data. We’ll also get a better understanding of the quality of data communities collect using sensors for non-regulatory purposes. We’ll see how communities transfer data from sensors to databases and visualize the results. Finally, the sensors will produce as much as 150 gigabytes of open data a year —data anyone can use.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy often says communities are “incubators for innovation.” We’re hoping the challenge will inspire communities to come up with innovative approaches for managing data so their residents and other communities can benefit. Show us how it’s done.

Each year the Commons Lab hosts a number of Interns for 3-12 month appointments. These Interns support our research and outreach efforts, learning about citizen science and meeting key community members in the process. Because we are interested in understanding how newcomers appreciate the paradigm of citizen science, we ask each to blog about their experiences during their last week at the Wilson Center.

Christian Belcher is a rising senior at Georgetown University, majoring in Political Economy and minoring in Political and Social Thought. He hopes to shape public policy one day by employing the skills he has garnered in both the professional and academic settings.

Admittedly, I haven’t taken a science class since my freshman year of college – an introductory course in astronomy aimed at appeasing the “monkey on my back” that was general education requirements. To make matters worse, I’m about as fluent in Python or C++ as I am in Esperanto. So at first glance, I was perhaps the least-likely candidate for an internship with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Program. That said, the skill transfer from previous academic research projects, and the value of an “outsider perspective,” enabled me to feel that, despite being out-of-my-league at times, at least I was playing the same sport.

The initial unfamiliarity, and subsequent intimidation, that I felt during my first week on the job may in fact mirror how other laymen regard professional science as a whole. But if that is at all the case, then citizen science projects are perhaps the best way to address these inhibitions; they help bridge the gulf between the public and the ivory tower of academia. Citizen science is science democratized. As such, it presents us with many of the same opportunities and challenges that face our system of government today. Just as we should strive to increase voter turnout, we must encourage participation in community-based science. There is a substantial amount of overlap between the most politically-active demographics, and those most likely to participate in a citizen science project – neither of which offers an accurate depiction of the population as a whole.

I believe that we’ve barely scratched the surface of the tremendous potential that citizen science and crowdsourcing methods bare, for the citizen, the scientist, and society alike. Whether it’s documenting the effects of climate change, altered migratory patterns, or health diagnostics for epidemiological studies, anyone with access to a computer or smartphone can make meaningful contributions to revolutionary studies. The field is still in its adolescence; common vocabularies and standardization are on their way, along with federal policies aimed proliferating their implementation. The Holdren memo got the ball rolling, but what’s next? How about integrating a nation-wide citizen science project into primary school curricula? First-graders in Alaska have proven invaluable in the effort to document the spread of invasive species – imagine what fifty states’ worth of them could do.

Crowdsourcing has already begun to stand on its own, and proven profitable to the private sector, through platforms like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Researchers and companies are starting to appreciate the “wisdom of the crowd,” and won’t need the training wheels of federal backing much longer. That said, I think that the role played by the federal government, and federally sponsored platforms like Challenge.gov and Citizenscience.gov, will only become more invaluable in time. And with ubiquity will come an even greater demand for accessible resources and best practices, the kind provided and promoted by groups like the CSA, ECSA, and ACSA. Who knows, maybe there will be a day when crowdsourcing and citizen science are seen not as novel or innovative, but normal and instinctive.

Each year the Commons Lab hosts a number of Interns for 3-12 month appointments. These Interns support our research and outreach efforts, learning about citizen science and meeting key community members in the process. Because we are interested in understanding how newcomers appreciate the paradigm of citizen science, we ask each to blog about their experiences during their last week at the Wilson Center.

Thus far in my engineering education, the importance of social interaction has played little to no role; the customer is at the end of a long pipeline– sometimes literally– and their satisfaction is assumed as long as you have done your research and calculations correctly. It’s difficult to stay motivated if your scope of impact is limited to machinery and blue screens. I’ve noticed this sentiment among federally employed scientists and researchers. As employees of a democratic government, their work serves the American people, and should consequently benefit the shared concerns of the public. But, because science can be a highly technical profession and the educational pre-requisites are steep, there is a certain distance between the researcher and relevant communities.

Non-scientists can, and should, play a very powerful role in research, particularly when it comes to the Federal government. Local communities are the largest and most important stakeholders in their local environmental conditions, biodiversity of ecosystems, traffic patterns, and health concerns. In any regional project relating to these or other factors, the residents should be involved because they will be the most directly influenced by any results. But, self-doubt and unfamiliarity with the sciences or research can limit people’s confidence and interest in such projects.

Citizen science in the federal government is an excellent method of subverting that mentality by partnering scientists with interested citizens to perform research that both parties care about. Mobilizing citizens in this way allows them to feel empowered with regard to things that they typically wouldn’t. It increases science literacy, can produce rigorous data sets, and bridges the communication gap between research and community interests.

This methodology has proven its capabilities in regard to mass data collection and analysis across a wide range of fields in both the private and public sectors. But, there’s still room for improvement. My dream project is something along the lines of the latest international craze, Pokémon GO, but with wildlife as the subject of interest. Combining gamification with data collection through an engaging mobile application is a fantastic way to capture public interest on a wider scale. It could engage the 18-35 year old demographic that is the least likely to be involved in citizen science projects.

However, there are two distinct obstacles associated with this path:

The need for an advanced and highly technological platform;

Cybersecurity and the collection of information on people’s whereabouts and actions, particularly by any Federal agency

Citizen science is somewhat limited at the moment when it comes to technological scope. Many data collection apps, like iNaturalist, have been able to streamline wildlife observation projects, but beyond logging information and recording a geographic location, there is a lot of room for expansion. A bridge has yet to be formed between citizen science projects and the advanced capabilities of modern technology, particularly relating to smartphone apps. But, web-based projects like Eyewire and Foldit have proven that further expansion is possible.

Furthermore, with such advanced data collection methods involving the public, privacy concerns will rise to the surface. This draws our attention to legal, moral, and logistical problems that many organizations are facing in the Internet age, but that should not bar progress and innovation. There are many exciting new directions that citizen science could go in, but this requires new partnerships and the consideration of barriers very unique to the 21st century.

Lauren Nalley is a rising third year at the University of Virginia, studying chemical engineering with a focus in materials science engineering. She is interested in the intersection of science and technology with public policy, and likes the idea of becoming an “engineer in context.” She hopes to continue combining these interests by pursuing a career related to the management of municipal water utilities.

Written by Christian Belcher, a Research and Social Media Intern with the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

In spring of this year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced plans to host the first-ever White House Arctic Science Ministerial. On September 28, science ministers from Arctic and non-Arctic nations alike will convene in Washington, DC. Joining them will be representatives from various indigenous groups that call the Arctic home. Together, the OSTP is hoping to “advance promising, near-term science initiatives and create a context for increased international scientific collaboration on the Arctic over the long term.” The Ministerial will revolve around four key themes: arctic science challenges and their regional and global implications, strengthening and integrating arctic observations and data sharing, applying expanded scientific understanding of the arctic to build regional resilience and shape global responses, and of particular significance to us here at the Commons Lab, arctic science as a vehicle for STEM education and citizen empowerment. Current citizen science projects in the Arctic both address this theme, and serve as powerful examples of the near-term initiatives the OSTP intends to highlight.

One doesn’t have to look hard to discover the abundance of citizen science projects already underway in the Arctic. Because it is often difficult or expensive to reach, researchers rely heavily on the input of citizen scientists. This dependency has contributed to the proliferation and long history of Arctic citizen science. One such initiative, the Kachemak Bay CoastWalk, dates all the way back to 1984. For more than 30 years, CoastWalk participants have helped remove debris from Alaskan beaches and record observations of flora and fauna. In fact, a CoastWalk team member was the first to spot oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on the beaches of Homer, Alaska. And when it comes to keeping track of invasive species, one project has proven that no age is too young. “Early Primary Invasion Scientists,” an article published in Science and Children, highlights the contributions of a first grade class, who helped document how climate change is affecting invasive species in the far North.

Projects like these have cemented the role that citizen science plays in Arctic research, a field integral to monitoring climate change. With temperatures rising twice as fast as the global average, permafrost is thawing, and glaciers are melting, at an alarming rate. In conjunction with the Paris Agreement, the international collaboration displayed during the U.S.-Nordic Leaders Summit is invaluable to combating climate change globally, an issue with sobering local ramifications, especially for those in the Arctic.

Whether you’re a seasoned citizen science practitioner, aiming to promote a current project within the federal community, or simply interested in what Citizenscience.gov, and the field as a whole, have to offer – all are welcome to attend. By capturing the input and enthusiasm of the general public, citizen science and crowdsourcing projects are tackling the problems of today and tomorrow. Citizenscience.gov serves as the hub for federal endeavors of this nature, providing the populace and federal practitioners with three pillars of support: a Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Toolkit, a Federal Catalog, and a Community Page.

Presenting at the webinar are Elizabeth Tyson, a CoDirector of the Commons Lab, and Kendrick Daniel, a representative from the GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, and the Program Lead for Citizenscience.gov.

Written by Christian Belcher, a Research and Social Media Intern with the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Britain’s departure from the European Union, and the resulting diplomatic maelstrom, has left more than a few things up in the air. In the U.K., turbulent financial markets took their toll on the pound, while the country scrambles to hire foreign experts to renegotiate trade deals. Meanwhile, Brussels has heard concerns voiced by other skeptical members of the E.U., who fear that Britain’s departure might become the thread that unravels the European sweater. The tumult of the past three weeks will take a full two years to unravel, as per the probationary period allotted by Article 50 of the E.U. treaty, so any predictions at this stage are essentially speculation. While economists and diplomats discuss the future of trade and the fate of the E.U., we at the Commons Lab would like to know how Brexit will shape the landscape of European, and specifically British, citizen science.

The U.K. is at the forefront of the citizen science movement, with projects ranging from The Shore Thing, which helps to document the effects of climate change on rocky shore species, to Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, a smartphone-based study of chronic pain. But, since citizen science is a participatory venture, and many projects transcend national boundaries, it remains to be seen how future endeavors will respond to changes in the international funding and grant structure.

The U.K. has won more H2020 projects than any EU nation (image credit: LSE)

Perhaps the greatest change, from a funding perspective, will be the U.K.’s reaction to the loss of Horizon 2020 grants. H2020, the E.U.’s Research and Innovation program, provides an array of projects with nearly €80 billion (more than $88 billion USD) over a seven year period, ending in the year 2020. Currently, more than 33 British projects are set to receive H2020 funding, more than any other country in the program. Many of these projects, like DITOs and PROSO, are devoted to engaging the public in research and innovation-based endeavors, and receive most or all, as is the case with PROSO, of their financial backing from the E.U. One citizen science project for instance, has seven partners within the U.K., including the Universities of Nottingham and Edinburgh. The Citizen Observatory Web, or COBWEB for short, recruits everyday people (their words, not mine) to collect valuable information within UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. COBWEB receives funding from H2020’s predecessor, the E.U.’s Seventh Programme (FP7). How projects like COBWEB would proceed, potentially in lieu of readily available E.U. funding, has yet to be determined. For the U.K. to continue participating in H2020, it would need to obtain associated country status, a label that would likely require a few concessions. Of those concessions, freedom of movement could be a possibility, and a divisive one at that; limiting immigration was a driving force behind the leave campaign, and Switzerland’s decision to inhibit movement resulted in the drastic diminution of H2020 funding. Given its dependence on international collaboration, it is likely that the U.K. will do what it can to secure associated country status, and the funding it entails.

OPAL is among the U.K.’s most successful domestic citizen science networks

Many of the projects receiving E.U. grant money however, are European-wide initiatives, which is not to say that Britain has no funding schemes of its own. Open Air Laboratories, or OPAL, is radiant proof of this fact; it’s enlisted nearly one million participants in environmental and natural projects, and led to the publication of more than 20 scientific papers, all through the domestic Big Lottery Fund. And in fact, an additional three projects registered on SciStarter are based in the U.K.: Treezilla, an ambitious campaign to map every tree in Britain; a British Trust for Ornithology nest watching project; and, Flusurvey, an epidemiological study mapping influenza patterns. Domestic projects, by their very nature, are regional in scale. This is both a limiting and empowering element of national projects. On the one hand, something like mapping species migration across Europe might be off the table from an international funding perspective. But by focusing on projects near and dear to local communities, participation should thrive, while the costs associated with long-distance travel and organizational management are avoided. By staying close to home, many of these projects also qualify for funding from local museums and universities. Some projects have even profited from providing access to their data; the British Trust for Ornithology, for instance, has secured roughly £100k in royalties. With Britain’s departure from the E.U., the continuation, and perhaps proliferation, of domestic citizen science projects is likely.

A more cosmopolitan alternative exists as well. The global Citizen Science Association (CSA) already has several members from within the U.K., engendering relationships across the Atlantic. Perhaps citizen science projects in the U.K. will look west for new collaborations. Treezilla received its inspiration from a similar project in the U.S., OpenTreeMap, which has since become a global community. Should such collaboration and data sharing proliferate, by turning its back on Europe, Britain may have opened itself up to the world.

Written by Christian Belcher, a Research and Social Media Intern with the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The international project on citizen science data and metadata interoperability, supported by the Commons Lab and organizations like the U.S. Citizen Science Association, has a new partner. At the closing plenary of the Open Geospatial Consortium’s (OGC) recent technical committee meeting on June 23rd, the OGC formally approved the creation of a Citizen Science Domain Working Group (DWG).

The OGC’s mission is “to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that support geospatial interoperability.” Simply put, whenever someone asks “where?” the OGC is there, helping more than 500 universities, government agencies, and private entities make the most of location-based information. The organization helps researchers, public-sector, and private-sector employees alike by acting as an open-access forum for technology developers and users, each of whom benefit from implementing OGC-compliant policies and procedures.

With over 20 years of experience, it should come as no surprise that OGC members have engaged in a host of exciting initiatives. From monitoring Climate Change to laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s Smart Cities, the group meets each challenge head-on. Work through OGC is undertaken collaboratively through interoperability testbeds, where standards ae developed and best practices identified by experimenting with concrete use cases, and by individual members. For example, a consortium of OGC researchers collaborated on a recent citizen science project, entitled the Citizen Observatory Web, or COBWEB for short. Acting as a liaison between a variety of European Biosphere Reserves, the initiative aims to address data quality issues by integrating citizen and professional spatial data. Ideally, by complying with OGC standards, the species distribution input from a citizen scientist in Greece’s Mt. Olympus Biosphere Reserve would be accessible by, and intelligible to, a Zoologist in Wales’ Dyfi Biosphere Reserve. The toolkit and set of models the OGC is creating will help make potential citizen science projects a reality, in European Biosphere Reserves and beyond.

Given its immaculate track record and incredible potential, the OGC has plenty to offer the citizen science community. With the launch of the COBWEB initiative, a precedent was set for supporting and advancing citizen science through OGC channels. Now, with the establishment of the formidable team of researchers and professionals comprising the Citizen Science DWG, anyone trying to engage in citizen science data collection and sharing will have a new organization to turn to for guidance. Geospatial data saturates the citizen science field, and while collecting it can be a challenge, making sure the results gleaned are accessible can prove to be a logistical nightmare. That’s why this new DWG plans to underscore the importance of interoperability, eliminating the nuances that isolate projects by establishing best practices and promoting open standards. Citizen science projects rely on their communities, and now project leaders have a new resource of their own.

For more information about the OGC Citizen Science Domain Working Group (DWG), please contact Anne Bowser, anne.bowser@wilsoncenter.org